Fashion Modeling - How modeling got started

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Trípodos, número 18, Barcelona, 2006

Fashion Models asIdeal Embodimentsof Normative Identity

Patrícia Soley-Beltran

This paper examines fashion models as gender myths

and cultural icons through a cultural history of mode-

lling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by

the successive addition of meaningful signs: physique,

manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, cha-

maleonism, slenderness, and so on. The author argues

that models’ glamour expresses economic and social

power and promotes the values of consumerism, while

exporting cultural ideals through visual neo-colonialism.

On the basis of empirical material on models’ experien-

ces gathered from interviews, second oral sources and

autobiographical material, the author approaches

models’ bodies, identities and public personas as arte-

facts performed through the reiteration of collectively

defined gender standards and practices. This approach

overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse betwe-

en visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while

disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction.

Patrícia Soley-Beltran wor-ked as a professional modeland actress for ten years. Sheholds a Master of Arts degreein Cultural History from theUniversity of Aberdeen and aPhD in Sociology of Genderfrom the University of Edin-burgh. She is an HonoraryFellow at the Science StudiesUnit, University of Edinburghand member of the researchgroup “Business and Institu-tional Communication inSociety”, Universitat RamonLlull (Barcelona). She iscurrently lecturing at theBlanquerna School of Com-munication Studies, UniversityRamon Llull, Institute for theInternational Education ofStudent (IES - Barcelona) andat the Escola de la Dona-Diputació de Barcelona, aswell as conducting postdocto-ral research in Barcelona, theUK and France on fashionmodels as examples of in-gender performativity.

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Only with great difficulty does (the human mind)

come to understand itself by means of reflection.

Vico quoted in Finkelstein, 1991, p. 163

OVERTURE*

t was the need to understand my personal experience as a pro-fessional model that prompted my interest in fashion model-ling as a cultural phenomenon. Starting at seventeen, I work-

ed as a model and a mannequin in advertising and fashion for aboutsix years. One of the experiences that struck me most during that timewas the fascination I exerted over other people who, without knowingme, seemed mesmerized merely by my appearance. As a young womanwho valued herself for more than her looks, I became myself spell-bound by their fascination. I knew I could “switch on my allure”1

while modelling in front of the cameras or in the catwalk, but the spellseemed to be cast even when I was not making any effort to performit, in daily life circumstances, with plain clothes, no make-up and nosetting. It seemed as if people were “seeing” and reacting to somethingother than my looks, but... what was it?

Trying to understand modelling as a cultural phenomenonand, thus, to spell out my spell-casting effect, were the drivingquestions that, some years later, prompted me to look back intomodelling from a scholarly approach. I have drawn from my ownexperience as one more case study to further the understanding ofmodelling as a cultural phenomenon. My aim is to research thesocial context of my experience in order to connect the personaland the cultural —a central principle of autoethnography.2

On the basis of empirical material gathered from professionalmodels and my own experience, I will present some reflections onfemale fashion and advertising models as performers of role models

I

* An earlier version of this paper entitled “Modelling Femininity” was publi-shed in Spectacular Women, a special issue of the European Journal of Women Studies,Sage, 11(3), 2004, London, p. 309-326.

1 I owe this expression to informant ex-model Cristina Carrasco.2 However, I would like to clarify that I do not privilege my modelling expe-

rience as a case that can be universalised to explain other models' experiences.Hence, although the choice of topic and the research lines have been guided by myown views, I do not concur in the problematic exclusive use of the self as source ofqualitative research data (Reed-Danahay, 1997).

FASHION MODELS AS IDEAL EMBODIMENTS OF NORMATIVE IDENTITY

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for female identity and, more generally, as symbolic containers ofcultural values (picture 1). From an intersectional approach I will exa-mine the evolution of hegemonic beauty standards as mechanismsdefining and regulating gender, class and race identity. The startingquestion is: what cultural values are embodied by models?

To answer it, in the first section of the paper I will present acultural history of modelling paying particular attention to the cons-truction of models’ public personas through the addition of layers ofmeaning: class, race, nationality and so on. In doing so I will appro-ach the study of model’s bodies as “natural symbols” (Douglas,1994), a notion widely used in interdisciplinary gender studies (see,for instance, Warner, 1985). I will assume a notion of the body as anartefact resulting from the performative reiteration of collectivelydefined identity norms performed by each individual subject (Butler,1990; Soley-Beltran, 2001). Thus, the body is taken as a sign of per-sonal and social identity, a key to understanding the links betweenindividuals and hegemonic definitions of identity, that is, betweensubjects and social institutions. Learning to control the appearanceof one’s body is the first lesson in the social school of symbolic embo-

Picture 1. Advert forNorma Kamali. Model:Yasmeen Ghauri. Thispicture captures quitegraphically the use ofwomen as vessels forideology: “In dreams,a writing tablet signi-fies a woman, since itreceives the imprintof all kinds of letters”(Artemidorus, quotedin Warner, 1985: 3).

PATRÍCIA SOLEY-BELTRAN TRÍPODOS

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diment of acceptable identity and behaviour. Therefore, I expect thatthe historical review on the construction of the social prestige offemale models will reveal the cultural values underlying such embo-diment.3

In the second section of the paper I will deal with the cul-tural values embodied by models and their relation to power andglamour. I will also consider the performative power that profes-sional modelling practices have on models themselves. I will do sofrom the first person perspective of several professional models, asrevealed in empirical data gathered from several sources: in-depthinterviews conducted with ex-models as part of my postdoctoralresearch, published second oral sources and my own experience.

I hope my work will contribute to the incorporation intowomen’s studies of an influential group of women who have as yetnot been seriously considered. While avoiding the oversimplifyingconfusion of the person with the role s/he plays, my approachwants to escape approaching women who work as models either asthe victims of the hegemonic gender definitions or as its censura-ble promoters.

A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MODELLING: FROM WAX-DUMMIES TO “REAL PEOPLE”

Fashion modelling may have started in mid-nineteenthcentury in Paris with Marie Vernet. Although house models hadoccasionally been used to show clothes in the house of Gagelin,Marie Vernet, a sales assistant married to dressmaker CharlesWorth, is considered the first known fashion model. Since 1852,when Madame Worth very successfully sported her husband’s cri-nolines amongst the Paris aristocracy, the use of living models ormannequins, has not ceased to increase.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Lady DuffGordon, owner of the dressmaking establishment “Lucille”, star-ted to use women of poor origins whom she would groom andhire. She transformed the showroom into a little theatre and used

3 For reasons of space and scope, in my brief historical review I do not considerartists’ models nor do I look into the history of male models.

La beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur.

Stendhal, De l’Amour


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background live music for the first time.4 Some models becamecelebrities, such as Sumurun or Dawn and Gloria, the stars of theSelfridges’s fashion shows. In spite of their fame, models were notreceived in polite society since mannequins were consideredmenials. To make ends meet, most of them were “looked after” bymen (Sumurun, quoted in Keenan, 1977: 113).

This started to change in 1924, when Jean Patou, in order toenhance his sales on America, carefully selected white US womento model his clothes, so his North-American clients could identifymore easily with his designs. Patou’s selling strategy imbuedmodels with a new significance: nationality. This new treat eleva-ted the status of modelling and contributed to make it into asocially acceptable profession. The opening of the first model agen-cies in the US and London reinforced its acceptability and attractedsocialites to the profession through modelling schools, which alsoaimed to teach debutantes social skills and beauty tricks.

Models’ types were also evolving. Patou’s American modelswere tall and slender but not all designers used “statuesque” modelgirls. Cristobal Balenciaga showed his clothes on “short, stockywomen” (Lucille, quoted in Steele, 1985: 218) whose shapes were clo-ser to the looks of his French couture clients. In contrast, during the IIWorld War, the demand was for a more ordinary and cheerful type ofgirl. In times of austerity, the “accessibility” of the dresses and encou-raging smiles were the qualities the model was asked to represent.

In 1947, Christian Dior launched The New Look in his Parissalon and set fashion back into extravagance and away from prac-ticality. The use of high heels, meters of cloth in the skirts, etc.,immediately identified Dior’s style with wealth and caused pro-blems for his clients and models. In March 1947, during a photo-graphic session in a Montmartre market, Dior’s clothes scandali-zed the crowd suffering poverty, and a group of women beat amodel and tore her clothes off (Beevor & Cooper, 1994).Nevertheless, Dior’s New Look went ahead, and the distinction itaimed to mark demanded a new style of personality: a world-wise,sophisticated woman in her mid-thirties with a self assured look.Soon, the twelve top models in New York looked like Dior’s stan-dard type: haughty eyebrows and glossy groomed hair.

In 1954 Chanel presented her “Total Look”, a compound ofinnovative design and a relaxed attitude that evoked leisure and

4 For a review of the history of fashion shows see Evans, 2001.


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that was clearly differentiated from Dior’s style. Consequently,Chanel’s clothes were modelled on a different type of women.Chanel used herself and her family members as models. Her man-nequins, often young aristocrats who modelled for prestige, werestyled on the looks and attitudes of the designer when younger.

In the late fifties, Dior caused another outrage when essaying anew modelling strategy: to hire a dark, petite and inexperiencedmodel called Victoire. The rich Right Bank clientele of the house ofDior considered her “little Left Bank look” (Dior quoted in Keenan1977: 121) as an insult, but, when Dior used her again the followingyear, the audience were enthusiastic and called her “the very spirit ofyouth” (ibid., 121). Victoire’s body was Dior’s attempt to symbolisethe times: the rising importance of a new class of clients for the ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter) industry. Thus, by using a model whose looksdid not correspond to high society, Dior’s strategy revealed a treat inmodels’ symbolism that had not been stated so far: social class.

As mass production of the ready-to-wear was based on stan-dard sizes, it required models whose measures would fit the sam-ple collection used for shows and photographed for magazines orcatalogues. Thus, as made-to-measure clothes were replaced bymass-produced ones, conforming to ready-made patterns becamean increasingly important requirement for models, hence initia-ting the process of the homogeneity of the ideal body type. Otherrelevant changes taking place in the sixties concerned technicaldevelopments that made possible the reproduction of fashionphotography in newsprints, which together with magazines, beca-me ubiquitous shop windows that allowed women from outsidesociety circles to know what was fashionable. The demand forphotographic models increased, and the attitude towards modelsradically changed: modelling begun to be equated with business;models and photographers became the new elite of beautiful peo-ple as well as the heroes of several celebrated films.

Different types of beauties were required to market ready-to-wear for the middle and popular classes. Hence, the classy, aloof andlady-like attitude of models gave way to a more sexy, friendly andrelaxed disposition and “... girls who exaggerate the realness ofthemselves, not their haughty unrealness like the couture modelsdo” were on demand (Mary Quant, quoted in Keenan, 1977: 127).Jean Shrimpton was the first of the new “natural” models of the six-ties and a middle-class ideal: “I embodied ordinariness-which is, ofcourse, a hugely marketable quality” (Shrimpton, quoted in Craik,1994: 105). In 1966, Twiggy, the “cockney kid” and the first model


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whose public persona was explicitly characterised by having popu-lar origins, embodied “innocence and image of youth” (Twiggy,quoted in Craik, 1994: 84).

However, the ordinary ‘girl-next-door’ look co-existed withmore exotic styles embodied by women like Veruschka andDonyale Luna, the favourite models of Vogue and Harpers Bazaarrespectively. Both were eccentric types in so far as they did notbelong to the middle classes: Veruschka was an unusual Germancountess, and Donyale Luna was a black woman. Although blackmodels were starting to be used in the sixties, they featured only as“exotic” types: “there was no room for the average-looking girl... Ifyou were black you had to be beautiful and stunningly confident”(model agent Marshall, 1978: 114).

The economic depression of the seventies brought a moresober fashion and tougher looks to accompany it: models’ perfor-mances became closer to fifties’ haughtiness and aloofness than tothe sweeter style of the sixties. For the first time and, arguably, notby coincidence, during the economic recession, models’ fees becameincorporated into the advertising campaign of the product they wereendorsing. Lauren Hutton, described by famous agent Eileen Ford asthe “humane face” (Ford, quoted in Hartman, 1980: 77) because ofher irregular features, became, in 1973, the most highly paid modelin history: $200,000 for twenty days of work a year. The “humaneface” sold millions of beauty treatments partly by symbolising theguaranteed fulfilment of the material needs humans are bound by.Hutton was followed by Margaux Hemingway who famously got aone-million-dollar contract to promote a new perfume in 1976. Tobe able to “look like a million dollars” became paramount during theeconomic recession. The trend accelerated in the 80s and had itspeak with the appearance of the Supermodel phenomena.

The required models’ personalities and body types continuedto reflect the social context. The late seventies and early eighties’ eco-nomic buoyancy led to a demand for models who could display great“energy” and sense of “fun”. A variety of looks co-existed: fromboyish, to “pretty babies”, to full-figured women. The increasingnumbers of American costumers for European fa-shion brought the“Californian look” (“natural”, tanned, healthy) into great demand inthe male and female modelling market. Fashion increasingly becamea global business, and advertising spread to attract larger markets.

Once again, the appearance of the very high model’s fees, theSupermodel phenomenon, coincided with the worldwide recession atthe end of the 80s. Supermodels became “famous consumption


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objects” (model Veronica Webb, quoted in Elgort, 1994, not numbe-red) whose extraordinary salaries became an inseparable part of theirimage. In 1994, the Corsa Vauxhall campaign “The Supermodel” fea-turing five Supermodels was presented as the most expensive cam-paign in the history of British advertising because of their fees: “it’sactually part of the mythology that surrounds the Supermodels... Andit reflected superbly on us” (Stephenson-Wright, responsible for thecampaign quoted in Jones, 1993 :151-2). Indeed, Supermodels were soexpensive that they became a status-sign among designers. Valentinoplaced a $25,000 full-page advertisement in the paper with a pictureof three Supermodels parading at his show to refute the rumour thathe was not able to pay their wages (Blanchard, 1995: 9). Supermodels’popularity rose so much that they became “far more important thateven the collections” (Jones, 1993: 11). But why such hype?

In a moment of economic insecurity, the Supermodels werereliable sales tools, “a safe bet” (fashion bookings editor at BritishVogue Mathews quoted in Rudolph, 1991: 6) and a marketing stra-tegy since “for an unknown company, you show the world thatsmall as you are, you have the twenty thousand dollars (to hire asupermodel)” (model agent Galdi, quoted in Gross, 1996: 463).Moreover, supermodels were a proven commodity for they repre-sented a “global ideal” (Jones, 1993: 164) of beauty, used by Westerncompanies to target an international community: for instance,Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington sold Chanel to twenty-three countries; and Isabella Rosellini sold Lancome all over theworld. Obviously this global ideal entails uniformity of beauty stan-dards since the preferred looks are those of the white population inthe richest countries: “despite a trend toward ethnic looks... in everycountry, blonde hair and blue eyes sell” (Chris Owen, director ofBritish agency Elite Premier, quoted in Rudolph, 1991: 64).

Supermodels as a marketing strategy involved a sort ofvisual neo-colonialism in so far as in Europe and the US a modelbelonging to any race other than white does not get the sameamount of advertising assignments or cosmetic contracts as whitemodels, not even black Supermodel Naomi Campbell (Hudson,1994: 8). Most of the minority models model “exotic/ethnic” fa-shion or tend to be featured in one of only four roles: musician,athlete, celebrity or object of pity (Jones, 1993: 14-5) —this stillbeing particularly true of black models. Although this trend hasstarted to change, and a number of magazines are now addressingnon-white female audiences thus attempting to construct positiveconstructions of black and hispanic women, as Helcké notes “posi-


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tive constructions of black femininity are systematically subvertedby the inescapable commercial ties that these profit-making ven-tures (fashion magazines) have” (Helcké, 2003: 12).5

The model as a “celebrated commodity” (Bellafante, 1995:65) is a product of the mass-marketing of fashion that started inthe late seventies and early eighties. Designers’ licenses broughtmoderately priced clothes to the market and increased the models’exposure to the public through street ads targeting a wider audien-ce. The growth of media attention towards the fashion world fos-tered a second wave of interest in fashion on a scale comparable tothat of the dailies in the late fifties. “Style conscious” internatio-nal channels like CNN or MTV brought fashion “into living roomsin Atlanta” where “people don’t even need to buy $5 fashionmagazines anymore” (black top model and writer Webb, quoted inBellafante, 1995: 65). As a consequence, modelling became a flou-rishing business and a cultural phenomenon of growing impor-tance. Models have even become a referent for eroticism: not onlya number of prostitution ads describe sexual workers as “models”,they have even replaced the famous Playboy “bunnies” (SpanishPlayboy’s entitles its 2003 July issue “The 99 Sexiest Models”).

Concerning the evolving beauty standards, the 90s econo-mic crisis coincided with the displacement of the “natural healthylooks” and the arrival of the “moda povera” look, the waif, thegrunge style and its blasé attitude. However, the high glamour of theSupermodel system lingered. Most famously, Kate Moss’ “super-real” body made her into an icon of the anti-fashion statement thatfashion was keen to espouse. She was the only model since Twiggyto incorporate her working class background into her image.According to photographer and mentor Corinne Day, Moss’ mini-mal body epitomised the “honesty” naturalness, cleanliness, inge-nuousness that the nineties are demanding after the “high artifice”of the eighties (Day interviewed in Tatler, 1993: 30).

The trend spread, so Spanish magazine Telva echoed:“everything is now ingenuous and clean... Girls, not women arethe healthy aspect of the 90s” (Telva, 1994: 86, my translation).

5 The spreading and reception of Western beauty standards and its accompanyinggender and cultural ideals could be fruitfully studied by examining the development ofbeauty contests as commercial and recruitment strategies in emerging markets, such asEastern Europe. The failed World Beauty Contest organised in Nigeria in 2003 providesa tragic example of such events.


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Arguably, young girls are healthy since, as children, they have notyet been exposed to sex and drugs, and thus they are AIDS-safe. Asa consequence of this new “taste” for younger looks, the age forstarting a modelling career fell and fourteen-year-old models arenot uncommon.

In the mid 90s, other trends developed in fashion modelling,such as using older models “with more meaningful lives” (Irvine,1994: 11), models with “unusual” features (Elle, Sept. 1993; Jeal,1994), or “real people” (Dudgeon, 1994: 15). Often, these “morereal” models are professional models or actors hired from agencieslike “Real People” in London. Calvin Klein, for instance, claimedthat “what is real is beautiful” (Klein, quoted in Irvine, 1994: 11)since allegedly, perfect looks can be achieved through plastic sur-gery. Thus, since “perfection” became homogenized “it’s no longercouture; it’s middle-market look”, as a consequence, “the uneven-ness of individual beauty adds value” (ibid., 12).

These trends partly functioned as strategies to avoidSupermodels’ fees and fame, which were said to be eclipsing theclothes. At the time, all the “style gurus” agree that the trends forreal, ordinary" people is “just a revolution in fashion’s cycle ofreversals” (ibid., 12).6 Nowadays, apart from some renownednames, fees have gone down dramatically, and “real people” isnow a term regularly used in models’ agencies to refer to personswith no particular striking features who are often employed inadvertising and underpaid, but who have not at all displaced theuse of tall slender models. Not only are a number of theSupermodels still active, but new supermodels have also appeared,such as Gisele Bündchen or Karolina Kurkova, to name only a few.

In sum, although the exposure of top models is now lowerthan in the 80s, the Supermodel phenomena succeeded in raisingmodels’ prestige as a strategy supporting the spread of women’s fa-shion and beauty standards worldwide. The appearance ofSupermodels as the new celebrities and the “luxury boom”(Lipovetsky & Roux, 2004) in the 80s came together with an increa-se in the power of fashion as a normative authority. Coinciding

6 The fashion system is renowned for its ability to transform criticism into “trends”.Take, for instance, the protest against thinness that lead to hiring token models such asfully-figured Sophie Dahl, particularly famous for her censored 2000 Opium campaign.The fashion system constantly offers products marketed for what Foucault has aptly ter-med the pleasures of insurrection, thus managing to be “preservative of the status quowhile appearing to make claims of the opposite” (Finkelstein, 1991: 364).


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with the economic concentration of the classic haute couture maisonsin the hands of a few multinational groups, there was an increase inluxury labels thus erasing the frontiers that separate the high luxurygoods and those that are distributed massively. According to a studyby Eurostaf (cited in Lipovetsky & Roux, 2004: 103), the luxuryindustry turned 90 thousand million euros in the year 2000. The so-called “democratization of luxury” is supported by dreamketing, themercantilization of dreams, aimed at producing an obsessive desireto consume. Hence, the luxury industry is nowadays a very power-ful industry that feeds other enterprises, such as the global musicand entertainment business. However, as Entwistle rightly pointsout, fashion modelling is an “aesthetic economy... that dependsupon cultural calculations as much as it does to economic ones”(Entwistle, 2002: 337). There is no doubt that, as the luxury goodsindustry so proudly claims, models’ glamour is now superior to thatof Hollywood actresses. But, what is making them glow so brightly?

DISPELLING GLAMOUR

The brief cultural history of models I traced above reveals thesocial construction of these group of women performers as gendermyths and cultural icons. Similarly to the way in which models’cards, or composites, present their measurements and photos sho-wing their different images, I have shown how several layers of mea-ning have been added to assemble a “composite” figure for presti-gious imitation. As we have seen, some of the cultural meaningsembodied by models are: nationality, race and earning power.However, there are some more that I will review in what follows.

Our notion of self has moved from one based on the roleplayed within a community to one bounded by the surface of thebody. Subjects feel now responsible for developing their own iden-tity and, moreover, expressing it in their appearance. To serve thisneed, an industry arose to provide commoditized identities packa-ged as lifestyles (Featherstone, 1991). The identification of the selfwith the extended surface of the body allows the body to functionas a skeleton on which these lifestyles can be hung. Consequently,models, initially used as mere clothes-horses, have now becomephysical embodiments of ideal identities. They have come torepresent our ideals of beauty and social perfection. They mimic

I am an optical illusion.

Top model Clotilde, quoted in Lakoff and Scherr, 1984: p. 111


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the cultural values that have produced them and exemplify thesuccess that sanctions conformity.

As Barthes notes, in fashion the multiplication of personalitiesin a single being is presented as an index of power (Barthes, 1977: 256-7). Since clothes are equated with personalities, the possession of avariety of garments that reveal different characters is interpreted as asign of wealth and personal strength (picture 2). Fashion presentsidentity as an artificial construct that we can partake of if, and only if,we accept the transformational myth that the industry promotes. Amanual for models declares: “a girl could be striking once she hadbeen taught skin care, make-up and deportment by experts at a goodschool, and once her hair had been shaped and she had acquired apersonality” (Dixon and Dixon, 1963: 34, emphasis added).

Furthermore, “the nameless girls whose careers endure foryears are the chameleons who lose their own identities in whateverthe fashion of the moment happens to be” (fa-shion editor, quotedin Keenan, 1977: 136). Hence, manuals recommend: “You must beso adaptable that your own personality can be constantly modified,played down or even radically changed to fit the requirements of

Picture 2. “La Donnaè mobile”, by MichelaGattermayer, Elle(Italy) (1993)February, 123. Thiseditorial page capturesthe chamaleonismpromoted and deman-ded by fashion. Theadjectives for the clot-hes allegedly expres-sed through the clot-hes are quite hilarious:intellectual, rational,“soap and water”,feminine, vain, exhibi-tionist, trendy, classic,romantic, nostalgic,aggressive and junior.


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each photography” (Dixon and Dixon, 1963: 80). Similarly, a dis-position to accommodate character to appearance is desirable: “inmodelling school Naomi (Campbell) learnt that... clothes have theirown personality, and... (that) a good model becomes the clothes shewears, adapting her own character to complement the garment.”The disciplined chameleonic Supermodel confirms: “everything Iput on feels different; it’s like a different character” (Campbell, quo-ted in Jones, 1993: 56).

“Chamaleonism” confers on models a longer shelf life anddefers the feared “burning out” moment when the glamour implo-des, and these professionals are discarded like old dolls. However,the ability to adapt does not only concern models. “Chamaleo-nism” is a cultural and social value in its own right, given that theeconomy also demands subjects with the capacity to acquire newskills, spatial mobility and general malleability, to adapt to ahighly volatile job market.

Concerning modelling as a professional option for women,two myths permeate the scenario: the traditional myth of the modelwho marries into money or society, and the newer myth of themodel as an autonomous self-possessed woman. Concerning thefirst myth, a “fairy story for grown ups” (Jones, 1993: 11) whichcould be ironically termed “The Prince and the Model”, it reiteratesa notion of woman as an object whose beauty is instrumental forupward social mobility.7 Instances of models marrying into moneyare often given by the glossies, such as the story of NataliaVodianova, who married millionaire British aristocrat Justin TrevorPortman in a much-publicised wedding in Saint Petersburg.

With regards to the second myth, the model as an autono-mous self-possessed woman in charge of her career, it is also a fic-tion devised by the fashion and modelling industries and reitera-ted by newspapers and popular literature. Allegedly, Supermodelsare to be admired for taking control of the commercial exploita-tion of their own sexuality, instead of leaving it to others (Jones,1993: 11; Rudolph, 1991: 64); moreover, it is argued that self-management in the exploitation of sexuality is an achievement of

7 Given that celebrity and economic success rewards conformity to normative iden-tity patterns, models seem to establish the positive limits of such patterns, thus acting asthe reverse of prostitutes who, in Juliano’s analysis (Juliano, 2002), symbolise its negativelimits. Thus, it could be argued that, in opposition to prostitutes who are “fallen” women,models are “ascended” women. It is not uncommon to find young women who combi-ne both jobs to make ends meet or to increase their earnings. See Gross, 1996: 417, 425.


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feminism.8 Camille Paglia reiterates this myth by regardingSupermodels as a much needed “icon and role model” since theyhave successfully achieved the goal of the nineties’ women: “to besexual and career women at the same time” (Paglia, quoted inJones, 1993: 11-12).

In fact, very few models actually manage themselves: “I neverfelt in control as a model. I never knew what was going to happento me next. And the girls who really lasted... never were the bestmodels; they were just the ones who had these great business advi-sers telling them what to do” (Lisa Taylor, quoted in Craik, 1994:82). There are, however, exceptions to this rule, such as Crawfordwho sees herself as “a president of a company who owns a product,Cindy Crawford, that everybody wants” (Crawford, quoted in TheFashion Book, 1998: 117).

Nowadays, the discourse about economic and social improve-ment of models is particularly visible in relation to young womenfrom Eastern Europe who, reportedly, have risen from poor back-grounds to achieve fortune and fame through their modelling care-er, as for instance Natalia Vodianova who went “from fruit seller tothe world’s best paid model” (Lecturas, 2003: 90). This discourse onthe “New Cynderellas” presents modelling as a good way of escapingpoverty although, in fact, only very few of these young womenactually manage to achieve economic stability working as models.

As the historical review reveals, the social discourse surrounding

8 The position of some feminist sectors is paradoxical, since they consider modelsas both victims of the hegemonic gender definitions and its censurable promoters. Iexperienced both treatments by Lidia Falcón, president of the Spanish Feminist Party,who anonymously sent a couple of journalists to interview me and take pictures for anarticle which she signed as coordinator (Falcón and Hijar, 1982). In the article, modelswere presented as dumb dolls completely mesmerized by our own image and publicadmiration, and totally unaware of the “perils” of our profession. Amongst other falsefacts, it was suggested in the article that I was being paid for having sex with my maleclients —amazingly, the existence of a little piano in my family’s flat is cited as a relia-ble sign leading to this assumption! (ibid., 75). The authors clearly equated modellingwith sexual work. The allegation was not only untrue in relation to my professional acti-vities, it also seemed to assume a notion of sexual workers as morally despicable— a posi-tion I totally disagree with. In the current social context in which gender differences con-cerning professional opportunities, prestige and pay are still rife, the widespread valueput on females beauty drives many young women to try to profit from their looks.Feminism should try to overcome their dogmatic stance and prejudices concerning thisissue: not all professional models are victims of exploitation, nor do they hold full res-ponsibility for the tyrannical pressure of image that affects us all. Moreover, a rigorousanalysis of the construction of beauty models would be very fruitful in order to advan-ce knowledge about the objectification of women that underlies gender violence.


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models link beauty with socio-economic power and high self-esteem.Self-confidence is an emotion models constantly perform, althoughthe aesthetical and emotional expression of social status and self-assu-rance has varied from Dolores who played “Empress of Fashion, theDiscourager of Hesitancy” in Ziegfield Follies (Evans, 2001: 283), to the“polished froideur” that signified “class” (The Fashion Book referring tomodel Bettina, 1998: 54), ending in the permanent euphoria of being“three or four glasses of champagne high” (Moncur, 1991: 2) or “thegreat ‘fuck you’ moment when you looked like you had it all” (Webb,quoted in Perkins & Givhan, 1998, not numbered).

To “be” a model is tantamount to obtaining the “officialdegree certificate” in beauty certifying normative compliance andsocial acceptability. By embodying alleged physical perfection andpermanent self-confidence, models’ images and public personasmake us believe in the utopian possibility of avoiding the discre-dit and abjection that menaces many women for not conformingto aesthetic and behavioural norms. The underlying notion is thatself-confidence can be achieved through conformity to beautystandards, and that such conformity is rewarded with self-deservedassertiveness and a better social position. As hip hop entrepreneurSimmons puts it: “upper income fashion is about success andthat’s what people are buying into” (Simmons, quoted in Perkins& Givhan, 1998, pages not numbered).

However, models feel different from the picture they portray:“I felt bad inside my body and very rarely splendid” (Fressange, 2002:117, my translation); or: “It’s hard to work in the catwalk... you aresurrounded by the forty most beautiful women in the world. You seeall your imperfections and none of theirs” (Cindy Crawford, cited inRudolph, 1991: 66).9 To embody a utopia has its downsides, such asbeing alienated from one’s own image, being considered as unreal orintellectually handicapped, becoming the object of envy, and so on.In fact, the image of models as “independent” (Castle, 1977: 84)“young self-possessed women” (O’Neill, 1985: 101) crumbles as onelearns about their complete dependence on their agents, their chro-nic insecurity concerning their physique, the health hazards causedby dieting, and the lack of confidence ex-models then go on to expe-rience in their subsequent careers due to the assumption that theyonly get work because of their physical appearance (Foley, 1989).

9 For other examples from celebrity models see Soley-Beltran, 1999.


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Success is also signified by slenderness.10 The standardiza-tion of beauty performed by the modelling system has made slen-derness the canon as well as a sign of leisure and conformity. Inmodelling, being slim helps focusing the viewers’ attention on thegarments and away from the models’ bodies. Models are definedby manuals as the “skeleton of beauty”, “almost literally a clothes-horse” (Dixon and Dixon, 1963: 25, 80). Slimness also stands as asign of the transcendence of material necessities and youth.

The association of modelling with an ideal state is not onlyrelated to their income, but also to the imagined possibility of livingin a pleasant dream, a myth promoted by designers: “I don’t evenwant to be a lady. I want to be a woman... the clothes are so beauti-ful. It’s fantasy.” (Isaac Mizrahi, quoted in Perkins & Givhan, 1998:pages not numbered.) Similarly, Dior declared: “The world is a cruelplace; women must become their smile” (Dior, quoted in Quick, 1997:71 —my translation); and Ralph Lauren declares: “I do not designclothes, I design dreams” (Lauren, in Marie Claire, 2003: 132). Thus,what is being promoted is a fantastic idea of womanhood paired withthe aspiration to an existence beyond restrictions. For this reason,models’ bodies are described as “transcend(ing) the limits of culture”(Versace, 1997: 7) and fashion is celebrated as a postmodern pheno-mena, given that: “when substance is dead, style lives on” (Fink, 2000,unnumbered). In sum, models’ public personas are “simulacra”(Baudrillard, 1993), that is, sophisticated artefacts performed and mar-keted by a team of professionals that become the reference for genderperfection and desirability as if they were “real”.11

However, the artificiality of models as myths is disguised bythe contrast cast between real/unreal beauty cited in the model-ling discourse. Such contrast is superseded by conceiving of thebody as an artefact constituted by the reiteration of collectivelydefined norms regulating identity. If we understand the body as

10 For reasons of space and scope, I will not go into the issue of models’ idealslenderness as one of the causes for the increase of anorexia nervosa (see, for instan-ce, Bordo, 1993).

11 Shows themselves are also simulacra in so far as “fashion shows are part of thecouture labels’ ‘advertising budget’ since couture does not make profits” (Pierre Berge,business brain of Yves Saint Laurent quoted in Coleridge, 1988: 168-9). The real func-tion of the shows is to impress the press by an increasingly complicated staging, andto meet the conditions of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne, which autho-rizes a designer to trade as a couturier. Such authorization is necessary in order toobtain a licence to rent out use of designers’ names, which are the companies’ realsource of income.


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the site of the interaction between the individual and the collecti-ve, we can account for the special erasure between the private andthe public spheres that models experience. A number of themhave a very acute experience of the gap between “private” self-notion and the “public” image that is demanded of them:

I felt intimately involved in my job since my own emotions were

reflected in my body and its movement when performing. In contrast, I

felt strong limitations were being placed on the expression of my priva-

te self, since I had to adjust to the publicly established canons, which felt

to me like a prison. It felt as if I was in a school for young ladies being

trained to be the courtesan (Cristina).

Often models feel alienated from their own image. The needto consider one’s own body appearance as a professional “instru-ment” forces models to undergo humiliation with “professiona-lism” since their job involves “to be used as a piece of flesh” (topmodel and agent Wilhelmina, quoted in Hartman, 1980: 77). Inorder to keep a minimum sense of personal dignity, models deve-lop strategies to distance themselves from their bodies.Interestingly, alienation is accompanied by models’ awareness ofthe performative action their job has on their self-perception: “toa certain extent, you become your own image” (Cristina); “onegets reduced to an image. And for the profession, to a surface. Oneunavoidably one becomes egocentric. One permanently looks atone’s navel” (Fressange, 2002: 115). Moreover, self-perception isdeeply affected: “I always had the crazy idea of buying dressesthinking that I would feel better. As if feeling well in my bodywould come from the exterior and not from myself” (ibid. 117).

It ensues a sense of exposure and fragility: “The more visible Ibecome the more invisible I feel” (Moss quoted in Mackay 1995: 3)which at times is fought with artistic strategies. This is the case ofVeruschka’s artwork that involves “working against my modellingcareer” (Veruschka, quoted in The Fashion Book, 1998: 483) by pain-ting her naked body mimicking the rusted walls of the old factories tothe point of making it disappear. In my personal experience, far fromgiving me a feeling of personal power, as a number of people assu-med, my “glamour” made me anxious, for I was aware of arousing adesire I knew I could not fulfill. Thus, I knew I was exposing myself toothers’ frustration and accused of being an allumeuse, a coquette lea-ding myself and others to a wheel of endless dissatisfaction. As a con-sequence, I lived in fear of my own “model” self! (picture 3).


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FINALE

The study of fashion modelling reveals models’ hegemonicbeauty as a mechanism defining and regulating the normativestandards for acceptable identity. As their cultural history reveals,models’ glamour conveys symbolic meanings concerning class,nationality, race, social mobility, self-control, malleability, genderproficiency, wealth, power, success and the alleged self-assurancethat accompanies them. Models’ public personas symbolise anideal self and allegedly demonstrate the possibility and desirabilityof its attainment. They have become icons of beauty and socialperfection exemplifying success as a reward for conformity. Whenthey are associated with certain products, they become fetishes of

Picture 3. Model:Patrícia Soley-Beltran.Photographer: EmericoMancuso. As a modelI often played a veryhappy, smiling person,to enact a series ofcharacters that rangedfrom young womento middle-aged house-wives. This picture wastaken at the end ofmy career. At the timeI was simply unableto smile without incu-rring into facial mus-cular spasms.

Persona (Latin) actor’s mask, character in a play, person.

Longman Dictionary, 1985


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economic and social success. This association can rise to grotesquelevels, as illustrated by the case of the Japanese tourists who criedwith emotion when discovering model Inès de la Fressange wal-king in Maison Chanel in Paris, as the model herself explains(Fressange, 2002: 102); or the more recent case of model Kate Mosswhose old and well-known drug habit almost ruined her model-ling career when, in fact, her image has always been associatedwith an exciting and wild night-life.

However, the experiences of professional models reveal thattheir performance has its drawbacks, such as lack of control overtheir professional careers, alienation from their own selves, bodiesand emotions, personal insecurity, and so on. Nevertheless, thediscourse conveyed through models’ bodies presents glamour as arelatively affordable quality, providing one makes the right con-sumption choice. Through its visual power, the industry of luxurygoods weaves its magic to create unattainable myths inspiringdesires whose fulfilment is forever deferred. In ancient English theterm glamour was etymologically related to the word “grammar”,since glamour was the aura that surrounded those who, by virtueof being literate, hold spelling power. In the age of visual commu-nication, models’ are emblems of cultural values and their glamouris still related to economic and social power.

Models are both performers and subjects of performativity:they are performers in that it is their professional duty to effi-ciently act out the collectively defined standards of identity; theyare also subjects of performativity in that they are themselvesconstituted by their disciplined reiteration of these standards. Asshown, models learn to exert a tight control over their bodies,facial expressions, appearance, public conduct and self-unders-tanding in accordance to prescribed ideals, while their public per-sonas are fashioned into sophisticated artefacts through the suc-cessive addition of layers of symbolic meanings. In sum, the studyof modelling discloses how an artificial construct, models’ publicpersonas, becomes a reference for prestigious imitation and desi-rability as if they were attainable and real when, in fact, they arenothing but fiction.

Considering beauty as a very powerful myth and approa-ching the true backstage of fashion —not the one “revealed” by thebanal pictures of the wings of the catwalk, but that of the socialdispositifs to constitute desire— proves to be a fruitful exercise. Inthe age of visual communication, glamour “casts a spell” throughits conjuration of power and, in spite of its progressive preten-

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sions, the fashion business will only be radical if it manages to lis-ten to critical discourses and modifies its own structures andmeans of production. Maybe the time has come for consumers to“break the spell” that, no doubt, we would qualify as being “pri-mitive” if it were practised in cultures that were not our own.Maybe, too, it is time for us to stop believing that appearance canbecome substance.

ACKNOWLEGDMENTS

I would like to thank Prof. Bruno Latour, Dr. Judith Feher-Gurevitch and Dr. Andreas Mayer for encouraging me to writeabout my biographical experience. I am also indebted to Prof.Antoni Malet, Dr. Santina Iachini and Prof. Ignasi Terradas fortheir interesting comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Finally,I am also grateful to my friends Cristina Carrasco, Esther Sabartésand Loli Yañez for their support and sense of humour during thewriting stage.

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Fashion Modeling - How modeling got started